Privacy Policy

Applicable to Burkhart Peterson and its family of companies.

Burkhart Peterson and its family of companies is required by law to inform its clients of its policies regarding privacy of client information.

Protecting the Confidentiality and Security of Your Nonpublic Personal Information

We are committed to carefully guarding the private information you entrust to us so you can be confident that your financial and personal information is being kept confidential. In order to guard your nonpublic personal information, we maintain adequate data protection safeguards that meet or exceed our professional standards.

Types of Nonpublic Personal Information We Collect

We collect nonpublic personal information about you that is either provided by you or obtained by us from third parties with your authorization.

The Burkhart Peterson family of companies includes not only entities that provide tax consulting services, but also entities that provide all types of certified public accounting services, insurance services, and referrals to approved third-party service providers (including investment advisory, legal, and other professional services). In order for us to use any/all information that you provide to us for the primary purpose of tax consulting or preparation services or to use any information from your completed tax returns for the secondary purpose of offering these other types of services to you, we must secure your consent. Treasury Reg. Section 301.7216-3(a)(1) requires that a taxpayer’s consent be knowing and voluntary. Services from our tax consulting companies are not conditional on your consent to use your non-public personal information as outlined herein. You have a right to object to the use of your Nonpublic Personal Information in this manner. If you do NOT consent to the uses of your information as outlined herein, please provide us with any applicable objection in writing at the time that you provide us with your completed tax questionnaire and/or tax data. By providing your completed questionnaire or tax data without such a written objection, you hereby consent to the uses as outlined herein until such time that you provide written withdrawal of said consent at any later date.

Parties to Whom We Disclose Your Nonpublic Personal Information

We do not make disclosures that are not permitted by law. We will not disclose any of your nonpublic personal information obtained in the course of our work to anyone other than our own companies, employees/representatives of those companies, companies/individuals that we hire to assist in providing services to you, and the agencies that we work with in representing you. In all such situations, we attempt to stress the confidential nature of information being shared.

Disclosures to Consumer Protection Agencies

If you make an inquiry with a third-party organization (example: BBB) about services that we provided to you, you hereby authorize us to provide whatever information is necessary to that third party to make a complete response to your inquiry.

Disclosures to Contracted Laborers

In order to guard your nonpublic personal information, we maintain adequate data protection safeguards that meet or exceed our professional standards. We only disclose your information to Contracted Laborers that likewise also provide “adequate data protection safeguards” that meet or exceed our professional standards (this is required by us for any laborer regardless of whether their location was domestic or foreign). Despite these adequate data protection safeguards, in order for us to disclose the information that you provide to us to companies/individuals that we hire to assist in providing services to you, we must secure your consent. Treasury Reg. Section 301.7216-3(a)(1) requires that a taxpayer’s consent be knowing and voluntary. Services from our tax consulting companies are not conditional on your consent for us to disclose your non-public personal information to Contracted Laborers as outlined herein. You have a right to object to consenting to the disclosure of your Nonpublic Personal Information in this manner. If you do NOT consent to the disclosure of your information to Contracted Laborers that we utilize, please provide us with any applicable objection in writing at the time that you provide us with your completed tax questionnaire and/or tax data. By providing your completed questionnaire or tax data without such a written objection, you hereby consent to the disclosures of your non-public information to any Contracted Laborers that Burkhart Peterson has professionally scrutinized and subsequently hired to help provide services to its clients until such time that you provide written withdrawal of said consent at any later date.

Legally Required Disclosures

For determining when disclosure of info is required by law, we may have privacy privileges limited to a standard accountant-client relationship. There could be cases where we are legally required to provide private data to respond to subpoenas or summons.

Disclosures Requested by You

We will release information of any nature to a third party that you request us to if you are in good standing with us at that time. In cases where you request us to release information, we follow the procedures outlined in IRS Rev Proc 2013-14.

Address of Record

During the course of our work, we may need to request information from you, notify you of the status of your case, notify you of the status of your billing account or make deliveries/disclosures to you of your Nonpublic Personal Information. These deliveries from us will be provided to you at the last known address of record. If you’d ever like to change your address of record, you agree to provide us written notification of any requested change and to secure written acknowledgement of the change from us. We are not responsible for any confidential information being received by a third party if we attempt to deliver it to your last known address. Please be sure to keep us informed of your current address.

Retention of Your Nonpublic Personal Information

We retain records relating to professional services that we provide so that we are better able to assist you with your professional needs. In general, we retain records for the minimum amount of time required to comply with our professional guidelines.

We may update our privacy policy from time to time. Our updated privacy policy can be found at www.burkhartpeterson.com/privacypolicy. Please contact us if you have questions about our privacy policy.